Paper skin
I use a flax fiber pulp that's been beaten for many hours. This allows the pulp to hold a lot of pigment, resulting in bright, saturated color. It’s high-shrinkage, so as it dries it pulls itself taut around a solid form. And it’s translucent, which allows the color and tone of whatever is beneath to partially show through.
Instead of traditional methods of papermaking, I spray the pigmented pulp onto screens, allowing for sheets that are roughly 4 x 4 feet. Layer by layer of numerous colors, I build a sheet from one side to the other.
Image of papers
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Once or twice a year I spend a couple of weeks in which I shift the studio to papermaking mode and simply make sheets. I work my way around the color wheel, making gradients from color to color in various saturations. And sheets I call cloud: the speckled misty whites.
I use a clear, non-toxic, water-based medium to float the fiber on the surface, giving it durability and vibrant depth.
Because they're sprayed, the colors can form gradients. A sheet might be in the green range, but gradually shift from yellow-green to blue-green across a single sheet. This adds immensely to the array of color options.
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